This book is about a collection of letters from Aida to her partner, Xavier. They both live in a country, unnamed, and has a repressive regime. Xavier is in prison, and Aida is outside, and in her letters, she describes what the outside world is like to Xavier, who has been in prison for quite a while now. Some of the letters are unsent. And for those letters that are sent, Xavier takes notes on the back pages.
The book's end cover prints some praise for it, and unfortunately I cannot relate. It always felt like I was running blind, like there are massive parts of the context and the reader is left to their own devices to fill it up. There is unidirectional information flow, always from Aida to Xavier, and as a reader, I cannot help but feel that this is essentially a black box. Aida throws something in and nothing comes back. And as a reader, that is frustrating.
So yeah, I couldn't agree and say that this book is mind-blowing, but rather, I felt like this book had a handicap. It felt like a book that didn't want to be read. Like the juicy parts were all trapped inside, similar to Xavier, trapped in prison. For all we know, Aida might be schizophrenic, and all of this was her hallucination. Thankfully, this book was also relatively short. Since anything longer and I probably would have lost major interest. I give this 3 out of 5 stars. Would I read another John Berger book? Probably not.
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